Worshipping at the Shrine of Hayao Miyazaki

Reading
Dana’s lovely and whimsical review
of Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki’s new film
Ponyo
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which itself sounds lovely and whimsical
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I swelled with gratitude for his sui generis filmmaking and the way he seriously applies it to children’s themes. When we discovered Miyazaki through his film for young children,
My Neighbor Totoro
, I felt like I’d walked through the Disney looking glass into a world of animation that would actually make my kids see their own surroundings differently. Later we discovered
Kiki’s Delivery Service
, the coming-of-age tale of a kid witch, which is my all-time favorite kids’ movie. One of the things I love about Miyazaki is that you can move through his movies as your children get older.
Castle in the Sky
is good for my 6-year-old and 9-year-old, and so is
Princess Mononoke
, but
Howl’s Moving Castle
looks a few years off, and we haven’t gotten to
Spirited Away
yet either. (Here’s a
primer
with more on the films.) Dana, you say that
Ponyo
may be too intense for young kids, even though your 3-year-old daughter got the plot right away. (Your great summary: “Boy meets fish-girl, boy loses fish-girl, fish-girl risks upsetting the cosmic order to get boy back.”) If you have a chance, tell us more
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what kind of kid at what age might the new movie work for? I’m especially keen to take my kids because it sounds like the movie complicates the message of environmentalism that is
often shoveled at them as dogma
.